


Butterflies?

by PseudoFox



Series: Muckin' in the Marshlands [4]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Anthropomorphic, Awkwardness, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Furry, Gen, Major Original Character(s), Minor Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 07:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14232723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoFox/pseuds/PseudoFox
Summary: Anyone may supposedly be able to be anything in Zootopia, but most of the mammals living in the Marshlands don't feel right in a place that hot, wet, and working-class at all. A few exceptions do exist. A group of young wolves accompany a prey mammal acquaintance try to spot one, but they might encounter an existential crisis on the way.





	Butterflies?

**One pleasant afternoon in the middle of the Zootopian marshes,**

"How many times have you guys walked right under those jets of steak-scented steam, shooting over your heads like you were rock stars stepping on your stage?" Gail asked.

A bunch of shrugs appeared in front of him. Gail pointed across the concrete top of 'Gorgon's Grub', his paw gesturing at the big building several meters above where the mammals all sat. The gopher then wiggled his legs upon the thick chunk of rock underneath him and took in the calm, midday breeze.

"And how many times have just stared, eyes going straight down at your toes, as you've walked inside? When they could've followed that steamy trail and stepped down the hill to this little butterfly garden?"

The gopher still got no verbal reply. He stopped to think a bit more. The five of them— one small prey mammal accompanied by four young wolves— had gathered around the few patches of flowers that jutted out of some tiny mud-mounds. Little trails of water vapor in the still air slipped around the mammals' heads.

Gail's questions may not have stirred the wolves' interests, but his companions had still duly followed his lead and taken their seats in the butterfly garden. The cubs' parents had essentially ordered them to head on down, though, and the gopher's crippling anxiety meant that coming up with some kind of informative biology lecture on the spot was far beyond him. Gail figured that they looked willing to watch for some sort of fluttery thing and analyze it when it popped up, even if they weren't exactly going to care that much.

"Honestly, it's like askin' how many times the badger at the counter picks his nose or whatever, like?" the skinniest of the wolves finally said. This baggy t-shirt, its huge Slayer logo looking larger than Gail's entire body, was getting slowly but surely stained from clumps of greenery sticking up around him. "Until Mom told me to go down with you to look, like why... I mean: why even notice stuff, even if you walk past a bazillion times, if you don't actually _know_ about it?"

"You guys have been... missing out," Gail commented, sliding a paw across his chest as he fished for the right words. Sounding confident was a big challenge to him even under the best of times, which that moment really wasn't.

"It's not like... we won't have to wait that much longer? Will we?" the cub asked, idly slashing a couple claw marks into a nearby tree.

"I don't believe so, but I'm not quite sure," the gopher truthfully replied.

" _Great,_ " three of the other cubs muttered together. The Slayer-loving predator continued to claw at the nearby tree trunk, managing to knock a third of the wood right down. He didn't say another word, but he didn't need to get the point across.

Gail's eyes moved intently across the half-bored and half-curious faces of the wolves. He had over a decade on them in terms of age, but the cubs already dwarfed him on the size front. At the same time, though, the gopher had gotten fairly used to being surrounded by thick, fuzzy predator bodies within the Marshlands over the past few months. Living with a fox roommate had contributed a lot to those changing attitudes. Besides, cubs usually gave off this non-threatening aura that the gopher found far easier to deal with than proud adult pack members— even the young wolves' howls had a squeaky melody behind them that Gail found adorable at times.

"I know that you guys wanted to have your smartphones out, maybe listen to some loud clips on Zoogle Video or whatever," the gopher went on, "but all that doesn't just distract you and possibly keep you from noticing the butterflies when they fly out. The noise can even scare them away to begin with—"

A loud crash sounded off. The Slayer-loving wolf had idly slashed a bit too much and the old tree beside him collapsed right onto his head. The young predator slapped the branches off of himself and kicked a thick group of leaves away. He let out an angry "God, really?" before turning to the gopher, the cub looking contrite in an honest way but still irritated.

"Look, I," Gail began, attempting to sound assertive instead of pleading, "know that it might not make sense, but the anticipation of waiting for the butterflies only _adds_ to the joy of actually watching them when they fly out. It's a key part of the hobby."

The wolves all shifted around a bit in their seats. Those weathered gray stones had gotten arranged in a certain way decades upon decades ago at the corner of the garden. It'd probably happened, Gail read, even before their parents were born.

"I mean it," Gail added, having a little bit of a protesting tone to his voice. 

"It _could_ make sense," the tallest wolf murmured, shrugging, from his spot directly across the Slayer-loving cub.

Gail had to take any endorsement that he could get. Those two young mammals— like the other three wolves— had sat themselves down for several minutes before the garden's whole premise hit them: waiting for the butterflies to naturally show up and not actively hunting for their hiding spots. It only began to sink in a bit later as the foggy breeze started up that they might have to wait a quite a while. At the same time, though, the collection of parents raising those young ones had eagerly dumped them on their gopher acquaintance— to Gail's confusion and surprise, though not his opposition— in order to get some peace and quiet. The cubs simply couldn't turn tail and leave without getting in trouble. Thus, Gail thought, the wolves felt stuck.

"I'm only, uh, thinkin' out loud here," the skinniest of the wolves commented, "that it seems weird that there's no _trigger_ or whatever, you know? Like a little plastic tube that you blow into callin' them, before they come? Or a sweet-smelling orange can where poppin' the tab means rollin' it in the grass, then curlin' behind a bush?"

"My cousin Gary, like, has a whole hall of a wall in his garage covered in those things," the Slayer-loving cub added, a look of interest finally flashing across his face, "right next to the box of Thanksgiving decorations and the balsa wood hunk that kind of looks like Jesus."

"I mean," the gopher interjected, searching for the right metaphor to get things across, "it's not like you can turn on and off the butterfly garden experience like twisting up or down a faucet."

"What in the what, now?"

"The butterflies show themselves _when they want to show themselves_ , and nobody else can make them," Gail concluded.

"Wait, I'm askin': what do you mean, a 'fall-set'?" The curious cub scratched his chin. The other four wolves made their own supporting guestures and looks.

"Huh?" The gopher stuck his neck out a bit, it being his turn to look confused.

"What the hell _is that_?"

"It's, oh," Gail started to say, feeling at a complete loss, "a word for describing... those... the twisting things that you have in a bathroom, right? The pointy metal bits on top of a sink that control the water, you know?" He did his best to mime running water, closing his eyes at the raw awkwardness of the moment.

"Ah, okay," the tallest wolf replied, seeming to at least halfway get it, "I guess I should've known that you prey call all of the stuff in your houses different names than we do."

"It's not a pred/prey thing, at all," the gopher remarked, burying his head in his paws, "it's like a 'who shops at Sears versus the Dollar Store' language, maybe?" 

"What?" several wolves murmured.

The gopher let out a pained sigh. "I mean, come on, it's not like all preds call a light-switch a 'shine flicker' or a chair a 'sitty box', do you?"

"I don't know this hobby at all, look," the Slayer-loving cub remarked, rubbing a paw against his confusion-stricken face, "but what the hell, seriously, does all this furniture talk have to do with _butterflies_?"

"Forget it!" Gail popped back open his eyes and scuffed his arms against the edges of his rock. "The point is: I can tell that you guys will love it when one comes around. We have to wait, yes, but the joys of simply _being with the butterflies_ make everything else worth it."

"It'll... be okay. Sure." The sounds from a 1970s-style robot, covered in glowing vacuum tubes plus giant knobs and all that, could have seemed less flat then the words of the skinniest wolf with the tallest wolf.

"Keep at it, please, you guys," said the gopher, "and wait a little while longer."

"Like our moms gave us a choice," murmured one of the wolves.

Gail reflected on things for a moment. Saying 'you guys' instead of 'you all', 'ya'll', or 'youse'— the latter term causing Gail physical pain when he heard it, the gopher shivering in disgust as if he had an ice cube tucked into his shirt— happened to be one of those things that 'othered' him. He dressed absolutely different from them as well. Even the way in which he folded his paws on his midriff while sitting, Gail thought, was totally not like them.

The gopher knew that he'd probably never take to Marshlands living. At the same time, hobbies such as butterfly watching and all of these other, cultural things didn't have to set up such a huge social gap from his neighbors. Not that his size or his species helped matters either, Gail thought, but then wolves as a general type didn't naturally fit to such a crowded, hot, and wet environment either.

In truth, none of his neighbors appeared a good fit evolution-wise for the Marshlands. The only exceptions seemed like the tiny creatures that crawled, flied, or wiggled their way upon the soaking-wet greenery. And they, in turn, always appeared either dangerous, disgusting, or both.

Except one.

The gopher's entire body shone out with delight. He shot out both arms and pointed out a huge butterfly sailing along the wind. It had popped up from right behind a pair of tall, gangling trees and made its way a closer inch by inch. Coming to a particularly thick slice of greenery in the middle of the garden, the butterfly sauntered straight down. Gail spotted at least two of the wolves flashing a sweet smile. They all gazed at the small creature as it turned a smooth curve and buried itself in yellow petals.

"The 'marsh fritillary', in all its glory," Gail declared. He leaned his whole body slowly forward and pushed his eyes open even wider.

"It's like somebody dumped grease on it or somethin', damn," the tallest wolf muttered, "and then stretched it out sideways." Without even really thinking, he stood up off of his rock only to see the butterfly immediately wiggle about in place.

The predator froze. The creature froze as well. Gail tried his hardest not to giggle. A few seconds of silence passed.

"You can sit back down. I don't think the fluttery one is actually worrying about you, say, pouncing after it," the gopher interjected.

"It's seriously cool to see them up close," a previously silent wolf chimed in, "instead of just in a magazine or on a TV show or whatever."

"Their 'greasy' sort of appearance is because of how they," Gail began, gesturing in the air, "get constantly exposed to the elements and have a little bit of the salty water, which's normally all below us, sticking to them often."

"Interesting," the tallest cub remarked.

"You can see the checkered pattern all over those wings," Gail went on, positioning his smartphone's camera, "being matched by how the colors flow between dark brown and golden brown plus this soft orange. And those color cells are kind of jagged in parts— looking like a stained glass window, really."

"And they're really native to here?" asked the skinniest cub.

"Yeah, we kept on wonderin' about that," the two more mid-sized wolves said, speaking almost like stereo speakers. They appeared to be some kind of twins. Nobody had clarified anything when their parents had sent them after their friends into the butterfly garden. "Like what the hell lived in the marshy places _before_ Zootopia really started, besides the teeny-tiny bugs that get eaten and stuff?"

"That's right, actually," Gail responded, slipping his smartphone back into his pocket. He scratched his neck as he thought about how to put things. "the wetlands are indeed home to some 'specialist' kinds of species." The gopher made the air quotes but immediately regretted it after the possible twins shot out weird looks. "I mean: these butterflies in particular usually feed on plants in standing water. They don't just survive here. They live here— actually being able to _thrive_ here."

Gail didn't add that said love for watery grassland made the butterflies unlike either himself or the vast majority of the Zootopians living there. Said category of unfit residents likely included the wolves as well. He didn't have to say any of that. At any rate, all of the mammals could put those thoughts aside and simply watch the pretty creature fly around.

"I wonder if we'll see," the tallest wolf murmured, "another one comin' over sometim—"

As if on cue, a second butterfly wandered in from behind a huge patch of reeds. Gail stepped a little bit backward to survey the whole scene. As the golden colors flashed in the sunlight, each of the young mammals had on immense smiles. He didn't know how it had even started, but the gopher had somehow not just gotten along seamlessly with predators but had gotten them to... appreciate something new. He felt genuinely warm inside. The photos that he snapped were the icing on the cake.

"I wonder, but like," the mid-sized wolves chimed in, still going in their unsettling stereo, "if they get this greasy-like sheen on them from being in marshy bits by the ground—"

"And?" Gail asked, really not understanding what they were thinking about.

"Does that mean their colors will fade or blur out or somethin' eventually? Like a painting gettin' ruined by the oils running together or that freaky stuff?"

"I think that, uh, there's, wait," Gail stammered. He tried to recall any more details that he'd seen from Zoogle searches. Of course, he could've pulled out his smartphone again, right then and there, to read directly from some Wikipedia page. It seemed like an obvious set-up for the young predators to mock him, though. "Well, unfortunately these butterflies don't like that long anyways. A lot of unfortunate events keep happening to them, like—"

Thunder cracked out overhead. The mammals all looked straight up. They couldn't see any clouds per se, but the sunlight had already started to fade. Gail picked up that distinct sense of rain about to fall.

"Oh, _shit_ ," the skinniest wolf remarked.

Sure enough, rain started pouring down all over. The gopher clutched his paws above his head. He glanced around, feeling as curious as he was irritated, and found that the butterflies appeared to have vanished in a split-second. He hadn't seen them fly away. It looked as sudden as a moment from one of those 'Star Trek' transporter room scenes.

"If we're still on answerin' questions, hey," the tallest wolf interjected, hopping right beside the gopher.

"Yeah?" Gail asked. The predator probably hadn't meant to, but the force of the jump had caused Gail to collapse onto the middle of the wolf's shirt.

"Where do butterflies go when it rains?"

"Oh, that's simple."

**Later that day,**

Gail's paws scraped long stains of quiet desperation onto the apartment wall. He tossed himself back onto the bed for what may have literally been the hundredth time. He felt the booming noise of the fan sounding off far above him as he clutched a plain white pillow. He smacked it down upon his forehead and inhaled deeply.

It was a logical question.

It was a simple question.

It was a question so basic that a kindergartner could've asked it.

It was a question that came about so reasonably from the situation that he should've felt zero surprise in hearing it.

It was, all things considered, a genuinely good question.

And Gail had _no Goddamn idea what the answer was._

No possible solutions to the problem made any sense when he thought them through. It didn't seem as if they could fly above the storms. It also didn't look likely that they'd fly away in some sideways direction. The creatures always appeared fragile enough to crumble like an expensive pastry if somebody just breathed on them wrong. Plus, they obviously didn't move that fast either.

"What in the Lamb of God's holy name did they actually do?" he had angrily asked his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He tried to actually answer himself. Yet nothing truly made sense.

Gail let out a loud, whimpering sound, seeming like a buff tiger stripper finding that he'd bombed his audition with Gazelle. He rolled helplessly from side to side, finally landing on the end f his bed next to his Mon-Tues-Wed-Etc case of his medications. He shut his eyes rather than have to look at them again.

"Neither 'over' nor 'around' works," he murmured, the lower, trolling reaches of his brain still keeping the rest of his mind tormented, "and they probably aren't 'under' anything. That's too dangerous, most likely, since the entire area beside the ground gets bathed in wetness— even when it's not raining. They're obviously not going inside anybody's house or someplace like that. What's left?"

He let his eyes drift back open. The Thursday-based section of the pill case hadn't been closed properly. Pale pinkness filled with strong chemical mixes stared at him through the little opening. It seemed like a fox sticking its nose into the little gap in a nearly shut window.

"Just look it up... like..." Gail knew that he spent his whole life— twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week— with his smartphone either on him directly or a few seconds within reach. He used Zoogle for a wide variety of things. He knew that he could find tons of information with one single click. "But I can't... I just... I can't go begging for help for something that adults are supposed to just know. It's like turning in my adulthood card. Just know... but what's the answer, come on..."

His mental gymnastics hadn't worked. He really needed to sleep. He'd woken up far earlier than usual that day— in any normal circumstance, he'd have already been hitting the REM stride by that time of night.

"Where?" he still moaned. He sucked in yet another deep breath. "Just... where do they go?" He let his need for rest finally take him.

To say that the little snippet of a dream didn't quite make sense was as much of an understatement as saying that Bellwether didn't quite get along with the predator community. The fantasy started out with a house-sized butterfly trying to eat a pinecone— one that apparently had become the size of a Toyota Camelry. It then began to rain. Nothing really changed from that fact. The situation continued with the butterfly producing an immense bottle of hot sauce— one that apparently dripped out so much that the Marshland streets ran blood red. The dream finished with the butterfly inexplicably exploding.

Before then, as a side plot point, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde appeared. They surfed the waves of hot sauce a bit until the butterfly accidentally ate them both. Jesus showed up as well. He, too, inexplicably exploded.

Gail finally popped awake. He wiggled around the bed and reached for his clock. Only an hour had gone by. He sat up on the blanket and eyed the pill case.

"Seroquel time?"

The gopher realized that he had nobody there to answer the question. Calling out to to other parts of the apartment wouldn't do any good. His roommate had left long ago, the fox trying to hook up with some Timber-using doe over twice the predator's age level but exactly at his horny level. The hunk of plastic holding the pills, Gail thought, obviously wasn't about to say a word either.

"Seroquel time."

After getting himself a glass of iced tea and sitting down on the apartment's couch, Gail downed the next day's family of pills. He had less than three hours until midnight, and he needed to calm himself down quite a bit. And he knew that he could. Everything appeared poised to work out okay.

"One question," Gail mumbled, letting himself doze off with his paws rubbing around the sofa, "shouldn't be enough to ruin what... what could become an entire life's hobby."

He took some weird comfort in that the whole thing seemed like an internet meme gone wrong. He could imagine PoodleDiePie making a video claiming that: "Butterflies fly across the flat earth to catch the tasty Tide Pods while being chased by Ugandan mutants, only to leave trails of rain underneath them because pee is actually stored in the balls." And, of course, it would get twenty million views in twenty minutes or something.

Still, Gail resolved to himself, he'd give in and Zoogle the living crap out of the answer if he couldn't think of the truth the following day. Getting past idle thoughts to focus back on the core of his hobby was that important to him. The easy to find but hard to spot garden... the weathered rocks to sit on... the wide, pretty views to gaze upon... he knew that it meant more than simple words could describe to him.

And they probably hid under parked cars, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading!
> 
> This is a part of the recurring 'Thematic Thursday' event, with the writing being a part of multiple stories focusing on hobbies. I'm fascinated by the idea of butterfly watching as a kind of life's passion, and the idea of living in a place where most of the residents feel fundamentally out of place, not just a frustrated minority, is pretty interesting as well. The story is a bit odd, but then I've written such a variety of even weirder things. Thanks again for looking at this.


End file.
